Artwork by Mark McGloin

Local Artist - Mark McGloin
by Kellie Underhill

"I don't remember not drawing," says former town of Chatham resident and freelance artist, Mark McGloin.

Mark, now living in Miramichi Bay, started drawing when he was just a kid.

"It's a kind of family thing," he says. "My brother paints and my two sisters paint. It's an inherited thing, I guess. My father used to paint."

If you're interested in viewing some of Mark's work up close, drop by Saddler's Café in Chatham. About a half dozen of Mark's paintings are framed and on display for sale there.

"I've sold quite a few of them. I don't advertise or anything, just word of mouth," he says.

Prospective buyers can also drop by his house and pick something from his private collection. Or if you have something you would like painted he is available to do commissioned work.

"I've done a lot of Christmas gifts and things like that," he says.

Mark says he would love to support himself totally by painting but it's difficult to make a living at, so for now his art is more of a hobby than anything else.

He prefers working with oils and usually paints from photographs.

"If I see something I like, I'll take a picture of it and paint it," he says.

Although, he adds that sometimes he paints from his imagination.

"For some reason when I make something up, it always has boats and water in it," he laughs. "I don't know why."

Mark has never been to Newfoundland but the paintings he invents from his imagination oddly resemble scenes from there. People often ask him if these scenes portray places in Newfoundland they are reminded of or have visited. He jokes that he may have lived there in a former life.

But scenes of fishing and water do run in his family. His mother's father was a fisherman. He did a painting for his mother many years ago of an old fisherman wearing a rain hat and smoking a pipe.

Mark remembers his mother used to admire the print in a jewellery store window in Chatham. She always spoke of the picture, so one day Mark asked if he could borrow it and the jeweller let him take it home for a few minutes. He quickly sketched it and later painted it from his drawing as a gift for his mother.

Mark likes to experiment and try new things with his art, so he doesn't always paint on canvas.

"I go to the beach and I find some nice big rocks," he says. "I've done quite a few of them lately."

He doesn't charge a lot for his rock paintings. At $50 each, he doesn't get paid for his time.

Mark also paints murals. He has a mural of a horse in a stall on his basement wall and he's painted a scene from The Lion King cartoon in his grandson's bedroom. He's done about 4 murals so far. Because of their size, they take a lot of work to complete. The Lion King mural measures 10x12 feet.

He is available to do murals for people or businesses and loves the challenge of trying new things.

"I'd never turn anything down, even if I couldn't do it, I'd try it," he grins.

One thing he's been trying his hand at lately is carving. He doesn't do very much of it but finds carving very interesting and different from painting. Recently he made a 3-dimensional wood carving of a sea captain from a pine board.

Another area he got into recently is doing paintings of people's big trucks. Mark says he didn't realise how big the market for trucks would be until he started doing them. In the last year or so he's painted three or four of them.

In the beginning, he was concerned about painting chrome and he had to play with it for several hours to learn how to do it.

"I was trying to mix colours to make something shiny," he recalls. "But that's not the idea at all. It's quite simple when you figure it out. All you paint is the shadows. If you really look at something that's chrome or silver all you see is a reflection of everything else and that's what makes it shine. So, it's really just black and the rest is painted with white that's what makes it look like it's shining. There's really no chrome colour painted into it. It's quite interesting."

Mark is willing to try anything. No job is too big or too small.

"I'm open for requests if anybody wants something done," he says.

For more information about his art or to commission a work, telephone Mark McGloin at 506.228.4656.

Kellie Underhill is the editor of Bread 'n Molasses. Her writing credits include The Moncton Times-Transcript, The Brunswick Business Journal, The Atlantic Chamber Journal and The Reader magazine. Send comments about this article to editor@breadnmolasses.com.